Java: Woo Minecraft at it’s core!

Bridging WooCommerce and Minecraft was quite a large feat, especially when I was first getting into Java development. It’s been a couple years since I actually started to code WooMinecraft. And it’s grown, though not exploded, but it’s catching on as users don’t want to pay subscription fees etc…

However, while taking a shower last night I got to thinking. What exactly is the purpose of WooMinecraft; at it’s core? I mean of course WooMinecraft has it’s purpose, I’m not refuting that, in fact I embrace it.

The system does exactly what I wanted. It allows people to purchase virtual items/commands on a WordPress site via WooCommerce, and depending on the settings, sends those commands to the server it’s supposed to talk to.

On the Java side of things, it basically just translates a JSON file into commands, then runs the commands as a console user.

So what is it at the core?

Well it’s simple. WooMinecraft reads a keyed JSON file from a WordPress server ( or anything really ). Each key within the JSON file is then processed by the console sender of the Bukkit instance.

So what’s your point?

Not sure really… Looking at WooMinecraft – the Java portion – does it really need to be called WooMinecraft? Granted the WordPress plugin ( WooMinecraft-WP ) is geared specifically to WooCommerce AND Minecraft. So the naming makes sense.

However, considering how the WordPress portion is actually coded; extending it is actually quite hard, if not impossible for certain things. In short, there’s no way for other developers to hook into the commands.

Okay, and…?

That’s what really frustrates me. Plugins lacking the ability to be extended, in ANY fashion, just shouldn’t exist; and yet I continue to work with it! Why? Well it’s a really great plugin, it’s been forked and moved, etc… over all it’s just … it’s my baby!

I keep telling myself, some day, I’ll make it super flexible. Some day!

But like I said, I got to thinking last night, and wondered, what can I do better for WooMinecraft? What can I do better for developers?

Let’s bring WordPress to Minecraft!

So, here’s what I’m thinking. There are so many things that we can do with WordPress as developers. And linking them to Minecraft is well… easy!

What I propose is a new, generalized Java plugin. Geared towards stricly processing remote commands on a per-server basis.

While on the WordPress side, I’m thinking more of a remote-command framework with filters and actions that’s super flexible for developers.

The idea will be to allow developers to provide their own commands, and have the Java plugin interpret them accordingly. Again WMC already does this, but I’d like a more generalized and simplistic approach.